Freeman Pontifex
by Rorre
Summary: Gordon Freeman has been proclaimed "The One Free Man" of the 23rd Century. Gordon never knew there was more to his name than legend, a secret gaurded for ages, and that it could tilt the scales of Mother Earth's very survival...
1. Proper Introduction

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**Half-Life 2 Episode Two**: The Freeman Pontifex

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A Half-Life fanfiction written by _**Rorre**_. 

Inspired by a fellow HalfLife fanwriter, a _mutual_ friend. You know who I'm talking about...and you know who you are...

Half-Life, 2, Episode One, Episode Two, Uplink, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Portal, Decay, Source, and Lost Coast are all created by, designed, and produced by the software/videogame developer company Valve. (But of course you knew that)

This story **may or may not contain GAME SPOILERS. Anyone who has NOT yet played and/or beaten (or watched on Youtube if you have a 'dead-for-dogs' computer) should NOT proceed on beyond this point**.

This fanfic describes the adventures of Doctor Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance during the time period of Half-Life 2: Episode Two. They have survived a near-fatal train crash, and are now being hunted by Combine forces for obtaining a transmission packet to the Combine homeworld that is in Alyx's possession. The Combine Citadel has imploded from the head downward, and has formed a massive vortex in the sky that is causing severe portal storms in the countryside around the desolated remains of City 17.

The Resistance is evacuating escaped refugess into underground and forest outposts, but are encoutering fierce raids and casualties from the sudden awakening of the Combine Advisors, telapathic beings gaurded by some of the deadliest aliens on Earth.

The Vortigaunts are hunting the Advisors, and are also aiding the Resistance against the underground caverns now infested by the Antlion species. Eli Vance and Doctor Issac Kleiner are working on a rocket with Doctor James Magnusson, while Judith Mossman searches the Artic regions for rumor of a mysterious project.


	2. To The Dead Forest

**"**To The Dead Forest**"**

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Had you ever gone to the doctor's? Remember those needles? How the doc would ALWAYS flick them and let the metal sound waves rebound and dart across the room to scare you? Remember all the nightmares about him, about a needle to your stomach?

That was how Doctor Gordon Freeman felt.

Impalement would be the correct word. Not stomach pain, or a piercing, more like a cold butcher knife in your back.

He felt numb, number than the paste dentists put in your mouth to quell pain (albeit tripling it), as the slicked blade ran through him. HIS blood splatter-painted the ground and coated the blade, he felt fresh blood catapult out of his veins and sludge it's way up into his throat. No, it began to pool as he coughed, droplets clung to his tongue as he desprately tried to contain it...

To no avail.

Time choppered down from seconds to hours, and his vision fogged with sweat and decay as he collapsed, the dual set of daggers cut upwards into his ribs as his attacker callaously let his body rip and fall off of it's weapon. The HEV Suit's armor alloys were like paper, and the nueral "shield" cut down to a dim zero percent.

Gordon cursed everything.

Wallace Breen, headcrabs, Doctor Kleiner's portal, the Combine, Judith Mossman, Overwatch, and specifically, the G-Bastard who'd relocated him to this apocalyptic hellhole called City 17. If it could barely be called a city, he cursed the Antlions and Zombies and Striders that roamed their as the new "law enforcement". A waterfall of painful memories and horrible experiences scrubbed his wounds and doubled the pain wrenching within him, fueling his hatred to boiling extremes. There were only two things that, for unseen reasons, he couldn't despite every fiber of:

The alien Vortigaunts who'd pulled him away from the G-Man at the risk of their own lives, and his companion who cried for his awakening. Alyx, who's beautiful form kneeled down in tears and began to fade into the recesses of his eyelids. Her image still beckoned to him in unconsciousness, and her dyed blackened raddish hair, dirt-plastered jeans revealed themselves to him, even as he descended into the bowels of hell...

"GORDON!!!" Alyx's cry hoistered him upwards.

He heard crashing and suddenly the sound of wood breaking and snapping.

His attacker had him pinned with one fully positioned leg, he witnessed the destruction caused by Alyx's intervention. Whoever this assailant was, it had single-handedly neutralized him and, in the same bout, sent Alyx spiraling backwards into the underyards of the rebel facility. It's strength was inhuman, although admittably nothing was truly HUMAN nowadays.

He squinted, his glasses had been knocken off by the force of the attacker's blow and shattered by one of it's...gangly, cybernetic legs that stretched around him. Strands of hair were choked by the severe wooden debris, and the woman inside showed zero signs of life. The need for action throbbed the final beats of Gordon's heart, and a third wind slapped him. He could move, and he felt the blade wound dissolve mentally into a pecuilar frost.

He could worry about the injury later. Whatever this Combine assassin was, it wouldn't shrug off the possibility of it's second target's survival. Gordon pushed...

And the assassin tripped over him, frantically squeezing the nearest Earth to remain dominance. Gordon spotted his shotgun, a SPAS-43, rested only a few inches away. The assassin, Gordon was almost certain that it was not a humanoid assassin or of Combine origin, but the possibility of an Antlion having followed them so far made him scream in rage as he whipped up the shotgun.

_'RUWHHHHHHRHHH!!!!'_, the three-legged, biroid creature howled as it's prey lurched upward. A whole shell detonated in it's central "eye" at the base of it's core body, and it stumbled slightly. Hell hath no fury then Gordon as he viscously lunged and toppled the creature, beating it savagely with the butt of the shotgun while vainly attempting to reload it. He smushed in the second eye before one of the creature's legs managed to jolt him off, but it straggled on in an illogical stumble as it's single "eye" struggled to keep itself stable.

Gordon smacked the head of the biorganic creature and pressed the shotgun barrel into it's falling form. The shotgun's secondary fire triggered, two shells exploded into the creature's underside, destroying it's insides and leaving it lifeless. The final eye flickered and died, and Gordon, in blind fury, continued to exhaust his anger into it, thrusting his leg, fist, shotgun, and even face into the creature's dead corpse. Minutes passed before he'd reduced it to a melting pile of organic fluid and mechanics.

"Alyx!" Gordon's first word in what had to have been twenty four years flared into othe rubble of the facility.

He snatched up the nearest object and bashed the windows of the side building, hopping inside and scurrying underneath the broken floor to rescue her. His hands furiously ripped apart the chunks of wood, earth, and rubble that trapped Alyx, and pulled the young woman from her entranglement, clutching Alyx's coldening face in his arms.

_Alyx_...


End file.
